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A comparison of President Obama's State of the Union speeches.

In a blow to the Obama administration, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has concluded that the president’s economic stimulus plan created fewer jobs than expected and “crowds out” private investment. A new report the CBO released on Tuesday finds that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act may have boosted the economy in the short run by sustaining some 700,000 jobs at its peak in 2010 but “will reduce output slightly in the long run — by between 0 and 0.2 percent after 2016.” The report estimates that the total number of jobs the plan produced was far fewer than the...

Melissa Ohden September 15, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - How could my biological mother have ever fathomed that as she attempted to abort me in 1977 that she was not only ending the life of her child, but she was wiping out every future generation to come from that one life - her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, her great-great grandchildren? She may not have been able to fathom it, the thousands of women who end the lives of their children everyday through abortion may not be able to fathom it, but as an abortion survivor now pregnant with my second child, I can...

[snip] You know you’re in trouble when Harry Reid says you should be more aggressive. If the languid Obama had not done his usual irritating fourth-quarter play, if he had presented a jobs plan a year ago and fought for it, he wouldn’t have needed to elevate the setting. How will he up the ante next time? A speech from the space station? Republicans who are worried about being political props have a point. The president is using the power of the incumbency and a sacred occasion for a political speech. Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the...

<p>BEIRUT (AP) -- Syria's closest ally, Iran, warned Saturday that a power vacuum in Damascus could spark an unprecedented regional crisis while urging President Bashar Assad to listen to some of his people's "legitimate demands." Thousands of protesters, meanwhile, insisted they will defy tanks and bullets until Assad goes.</p>

Industrial Policy: The fact that President Obama's "green jobs" campaign has been an enormously expensive failure is now so glaringly obvious even the New York Times can't ignore it any longer. In a surprisingly candid article headlined "Number of Green Jobs Fails to Live Up to Promises," the Times' Aaron Glantz reports that "federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show," and that Obama's goal of 5 million new green jobs in 10 years is a "pipe dream." Glantz notes, for example, that Obama's much-heralded weatherization program "never caught on." California still...

Few Americans needed Standard & Poor to confirm the mismanagement of the United States government and its finances. The downgrading of American credit will raise interest rates on America’s huge debt and ultimately on all Americans. Popular polls say that most Americans blame Congress—but that’s too simplistic. As much as Barack Obama would like to shift that blame onto Congress, the fault lies squarely on the shoulders of President. It is first and foremost a leadership problem that is crippling America—and the leader is President Barack Obama—not the many members of Congress. No matter how many speeches he makes, the...

Hidalgo County Sheriff Department has confirmed that New Mexico rancher, Larry Link, was murdered earlier today on his property. Sources are reporting that the rancher was responding to an alleged- illegal alien on his property at Stein’s Ghost Town when the he was gunned-down. The murder took place on the southwest side of the state near the Arizona border on Interstate 10 at mile marker three. The Hidalgo Sheriff’s Deputies responded to the scene, only to find the rancher had already died.

RUSH: Look, we know that Obama's stimulus plan, Obama's stimulus was nothing more than a money laundering slush fund. We know that now. We know that in any number of ways, learning it most recently from Wisconsin. A full 80% of the money that Wisconsin got went to the public sector unions -- and, of course, that money, a percentage of that just goes right back to the Democrat Party. But let's say -- just for the sake of discussion, playing devil's advocate, let's -- that Obama is simply is a misguided, well-intentioned statist; and he really believes that massive...

STATE MULTICULTURALISM HAS FAILED, SAYS BRITISH PRIME MINISTER DAVID CAMERON It looks like Europe may be waking up to the Islamist threat to liberty and democracy faster than America. That’s disappointing to me. But at least some portions of the free world aren’t completely brain dead. You’ll recall on October 18, 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made headlines by denouncing “multiculturalism” in Germany as having “failed utterly.” Now Cameron has some choice words for the morally confused. See more at www.mrformansplanet.com

2010 The death of Osama bin Laden, at least according to Craig and Jane Hamilton-Parker, "Britain's Best Psychic Couple". Craig and Jane also predicted the discovery of a way to make electricity from water, a secret attempt to clone a famous person and Barack Obama developing an interest in holistic medicine. The death of Twitter, "which as we know it will fade away", as predicted by the American news outlet CNBC. Either that or it would be shut down. In fact, Twitter gained 100 million new users, more than doubled its staff and raised US$200 million of financing. America will...

Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats. Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public." Democrats on Capitol Hill are now saying this is happening to Mr. Obama. Mr. Mondale says it's time for the president "to get rid of those teleprompters and connect"...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted on Sunday that despite intensive diplomacy, Israel had failed to dissuade Russia from selling advanced missiles to Syria. Speaking at Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu told ministers that Russian plans to go ahead with the delivery of P-800 anti-ship missiles to Syria was "problematic" for Israel. "We have been aware of this deal for some time and there were discussions with the Russians at every level," Netanyahu said.

Although it is wracked by floods, violence, and other tragedies, this small story from rural Pakistan caught my eye recently: SHIKARPUR: Ten people were killed in an armed clash between Magsi and Qambrani tribes in the jurisdiction of Golodaro police station on Thursday evening. According to sources, the gunbattle followed a brawl over irrigation of paddy crops near Kuddan village. The sources said the Qambrani tribe lost seven men while the Magsi tribe lost three. Sanaullah Abbasi, a senior police official, told Dawn five bodies had been recovered. A big police contingent stormed the village late in the evening and...

Even as Congress increased overall federal spending from a then-record $2.6 trillion in fiscal 2006 to $3.6 trillion in fiscal 2010, it only appropriated enough funds for the Department of Homeland Security to provide a fraction of the additional 40,000 detention spaces for illegal aliens that had been authorized by an immigration law approved in 2004. Because it lacked adequate detention space, DHS says it was forced over the last three years to release hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens it had caught and were being processed for deportation. Among these, as CNSNews.com recently reported, were 481

Jake Tapper interviewed Vice President Joe Biden and challenged him on the administration’s new Recovery Summer public-relations sloganeering, with economic indicators retreating and consumer confidence falling. Biden implicitly acknowledged the failure of the Porkulus bill, but had a ready villain to blame — the dastardly Republicans who wouldn’t let the administration spend as much as they wanted: “There’s a lot of people at the time argued it was too small,” he said. “A lot of people in our administration…even some Republican economists and some Nobel laureates like Paul Krugman, who continues to argue it was too small.”“But, you know,” Biden...

Though federal regulations require offshore drilling locations to be inspected by the Department of the Interior's Minerals Mining Service every 30 days, those inspections have repeatedly not happened since the Deepwater Horizon site was permitted by MMS in 2001 – including one out of every four months since President Obama's inauguration. ABC News has learned that in the 16 months from January 2009 through April 2010 MMS failed to inspect Deepwater Horizon four times – in May 2009, August 2009, December 2009, and January 2010. The reasons for the lack of inspections, sources said, were logistic.

A top Pakistani Taliban commander took credit for yesterday's failed car bomb attack in New York City. Qari Hussain Mehsud, the top bomb maker for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, said he takes "fully responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." Qari Hussain made the claim on an audiotape accompanied by images that was released on a YouTube website that calls itself the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel. The tape has yet to be verified, but US intelligence officials contacted by The Long War Journal believe it is legitimate. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan News Channel on YouTube was created...

PHOENIX – Arizona's largest newspaper criticized U.S. Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl and a host of other elected officials in a rare front-page editorial Sunday, saying the politicians have failed to find solutions to illegal immigration. The state has become the target of calls for boycotts since adopting a law that requires local and state law enforcement officers to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally. "The federal government is abdicating its duty on the border. Arizona politicians are pandering to public fear," The Arizona Republic said in a full-page...

ROSSANO, Italy, April 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Italian government has announced that it will launch an investigation of a hospital where a premature baby born alive following an attempted abortion was left to die for hours, before receiving medical attention thanks to the intervention of a priest."If the reports are correct we are talking about a grave case of therapeutic abandonment of a very premature newborn, probably also with some form of disability: an act against the sense of human pity but also against all ethics of medical practice," said Eugenia Roccella, the Italian Subsecretary of Health. "The...

Evidence from both Hawaii and Indonesia shows that Barry had to repeat kindergarten, and was just pushed along with the children his own age each time he returned to Hawaii.

Before eventually deciding that he was once again a conservative, Mitt Romney (R) enacted a massive, sweeping government takeover of his state's health care system that Democrats now regularly liken ObamaCare to and cite as proof that it might not be a total catastrophe.

SACRAMENTO (CBS 5 / AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he will re-nominate his failed pick for lieutenant governor rather than face a costly legal battle against the Legislature. Schwarzenegger is asking the Legislature to vote again on the nomination of Republican state Sen. Abel Maldonado of Santa Maria. He made the request in a statement Friday. The Senate approved Maldonado's nomination this week, but the Assembly rejected it.

Democrats don't seem to be finding any "hope and change" in their messiah. You know who is? Republicans. After all, it is really an incredibly amazing - frankly a miraculous - "change" that a Democrat president could actually turn Camelot Republican. That's FAR more than we ever could have "hoped" for. How's THIS for a title from a Democrat regarding Barack Obama? "He's Done Everything Wrong." Uber Obama lib Mort Zuckerman has written a mea culpa on the Daily Beast. Here's the essence of the article in bullet points: He's Done Everything Wrong* Obama punted on the economy * He...

Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense....

CBS News has learned the State Department system designed to keep track of active U.S. visas twice failed to reveal Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been issued an active visa allowing him multiple entries into the United States. According to a law enforcement source, the first failure came on Nov. 19, 2009, the very same day Abdulmutallab father’s, Dr. Umaru Mutallab, a prominent banking official in Nigeria, expressed deep concern to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Abjua, Nigeria, that his 23-year-old son had fallen under the influence of "religious extremists" in Yemen. The second failure to flag...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that airline security failed in allowing a Nigerian on a terror watch list and allegedly armed with explosives onto a Detroit-bound flight, a turnaround from her declaration a day day earlier that "the system worked." The secretary's comment Sunday was widely criticized, given that suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was foiled because his explosive mixture did not properly detonate and he was stopped in his tracks by vigilant passengers. The suspect, who carried the explosive in his underwear, passed through security at two airports -- in Nigeria and Amsterdam, Netherlands. Plus he was not...

Officials now say tragedy was only averted on Northwest flight 253 because a makeshift detonator failed to work properly. Share Man accused of attempt to blow up plane was sent on mission by terror leaders. Bomb experts say there was more than enough explosive to bring down the Northwest jet, which had nearly 300 people aboard, had the detonator not failed, and the nation's outdated airport screening machines may need to be upgraded.

Unemployment rose from 9.8% to 10.2% in October, accroding to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which also reported a loss of 190,000 jobs. Obama’s promise to tackle unemployment and to “save or create” three to four million jobs by 2010 seems ambitious (and difficult to measure objectively; how do you know if you “saved” a job?). Given the recent rise in unemployment and dramatic increase in the deficit, it’s no wonder that some are highly skeptical of the success of his stimulus plan. The concept of Keynesian stimulus is simple. Essentially, the stimulus is based upon the multiplier effect: the...

"No-drama Obama"? The president's flight to Copenhagen ...to make a personal pitch for holding the 2016 Olympics in Chicago was an audacious move -- and a dramatic failure. "Second City Absorbs Its Latest Defeat," read the (rather snotty) headline in the New York Times. But shed no tears for Chicago...With a projected half-billion-dollar deficit next year, the Second City is better off without the Games. We can't say the same for Obama's reputation after his in-person appeal failed to get his adopted hometown past the first round of voting. What new project can the president undertake to save face? How...

UNITED NATIONS – In his first appearance, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi issued a slashing attack on the United Nations Security Council and chastised the world body on Wednesday for failing to intervene or prevent some 65 wars since the U.N. was founded in 1945. Gadhafi called for reform of the Security Council — abolishing the veto power of the five permanent members — or expanding the body with additional member states to make it more representative. "It should not be called the Security Council, it should be called the "terror council," he said. The veto-wielding Security Council powers -- the...

Don't Exhale. EPA Expected to Declare Carbon Dioxide a Dangerous Pollutant The Environmental Protection Agency is expected in the next few weeks to declare that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are a pollutant, a move that would require the federal government to regulate them -- even without legislation. FOXNews.com Friday, August 28, 2009 Don't exhale. That advice may need heeding if the Environmental Protection Agency declares carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases a dangerous pollutant, a move -- expected in the next couple weeks -- that would require the federal government to impose new rules limiting emissions....

When things get tough, the tough get going. In California, local elected leaders continue to make tough choices to balance city and county budgets, while our state leaders have failed to lead. In the late 1990s, the state of California enhanced retirement packages for firefighters and law enforcement unions and approved binding arbitration for contract negotiations. This gave police and firefighters unions tremendous leverage at the bargaining table, essentially forcing cities to enhance their retirement benefits for public safety workers. Those enhanced benefits are an ever-increasing drain on city resources while other sources of revenue are shrinking. They cost Burlingame...

President Barack Obama's proposed "public insurance option" for universal health coverage seems logical: A large public insurance fund will provide quality coverage for the uninsured and force competing insurers to lower costs. In practice, though, one needs only look at what decades of government health care have done to ramp up the financial and quality problems endured by Britain and France.

Further proof that the Obama Porkulus bill is a failure. From Strata-Sphere.com There is good reason to be concerned that the economy is not even close to turning around yet. I found this disturbing chart showing the Oregon and Michigan unemployment for May (which are the two highest in the nation at a shocking 12.4% and 14.1%, respectively). Not only did the levels send a shiver through me, so did the ‘trajectory’, the path the numbers are on.

WASHINGTON – Pakistan is not a failed state but its government is facing tremendous challenges and needs U.S. help to counter Taliban advances, the Obama administration's point man for the region said Tuesday. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a congressional committee that Pakistan's survival as a moderate, democratic state is critical to U.S. national security. "Our most vital national security interests are at stake," Holbrooke told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He said that although Pakistan "is a state under enormous social, political and economic pressures," it "is not a failed state."

The drug-fueled crisis in Mexico is being used by some politicians and media outlets to argue that the U.S. is to blame, particularly its gun laws and society’s appetite for drugs. “Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” Secretary of State Clinton said on March 25 on her way to Mexico. ABC News blamed “lenient American gun laws” in its report that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives concluded that over 90% of the guns seized by the Mexican police are traced back to the U.S. Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. repeated this statistic on...

A few months ago an Iraqi throws a shoe at President Bush during a press conference; the Western mainstream media and leftist blog reaction is to call the man a hero. In their opinion Bush was evil incarnate and he had it coming; you cannot help but notice how many left wingers could barely help themselves not to express their disappointment the assailant didn't had a gun. Yesterday an Iranian throws a shoe at the demented dictator Mahmoud Ahmedinajad; the same mainstream media and leftist blog reaction: big, loud yawn.

--snip-- "After fitful, secretive talks lasting well into the evening, the would-be compromisers remained shy of agreement, and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., announced they could have another day to work at it".

Link only - Obama declares disaster in Kentucky ice storm

WASHINGTON – Staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission failed many times over a decade to fully investigate credible allegations of wrongdoing by money manager Bernard Madoff, the head of the SEC says, calling it a serious agency breakdown. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said he is "gravely concerned by the apparent multiple failures" by staff to look into claims about Madoff's business and to seek formal authority to investigate.

Speaking at a rally in Columbus, Ohio this afternoon, Republican presidential nominee John McCain defended his controversial decision to "suspend" his campaign as an example of his action-packed leadership style. “Inaction was not an option,” McCain said. “I put my campaign on hold for a couple of days last week to fight for a rescue plan that puts you and your economic security and working families first. I fought for a plan that protected taxpayers. I went to Washington last week to make sure the taxpayers of Ohio and across this great country were not left footing the bill."

NEW YORK (Reuters) – House Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, failed to report $75,000 of income from a villa he owns in the Dominican Republic, his attorney said on Friday. The Democratic congressman, who has represented New York City's Harlem district for 38 years, plans to file an amendment to his previous tax returns and likely has no federal tax liability on the investment, lawyer Lanny Davis said. Rangel probably owes nothing to the federal government because of depreciation and foreign tax credit, but he may owe a few thousand dollars to the state...

HARARE (AFP) - President Robert Mugabe's government was triumphant Saturday at the failure of a UN bid to impose fresh sanctions on Zimbabwe as Britain pledged to return to the Security Council if political violence continued. Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown would discuss further measures with EU partners next week, a spokesman for the premier said in a statement. "We will continue to stand firmly for human rights and democracy and will return to the Security Council in the absence of early progress on mediation, humanitarian access and an end to violence," the statement added. Mugabe's government, meanwhile, thanked those...

An important day has come and gone and we missed celebrating it. Of course, we’re talking about Low Flow Toilet Blow-up Day, celebrated on April 27. LFTBU Day is the reasoned response to the last big environmental conservation idea: low flow toilets. Like most rushed-through, well-intentioned environmental products, low-flow toilets suffered from the most basic of flaws: they didn’t work as intended. The low flow toilet required as many as 4 flushes to operate correctly; instead of saving water, they usually used more. Most people who had the misfortune of installing a low flow toilet can truly appreciate the following...

There are only two ways she can win the nomination now. Either she must overcome Obama’s lead in pledged delegates to overturn the verdict of the party rank-and-file. For her to do that, she will have to persuade a majority of the superdelegates (or a majority of them must reach the conclusion on their own) that Obama cannot win in the general election against John McCain. For one thing, she demonstrated again that she can’t attack Obama on any front without opening herself up to similar charges. When she tried to exploit Obama’s connection to William Ayers, a former leader...

Good and bad public policy have ripple effects that are difficult to observe or tally in the present, but over the weekend I offered Lee Smith's ("The price of Annapolis") on American policy related to Lebabon right now. The degrading effects of Annapolis could be observed at the Annapolis conference itself. Caroline Glick reported in the Jerusalem Post (in a column whose heading I've borrowed): "This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis conference...

<p>Before Gen. David Petraeus' report, and to give it a context of optimism, the president visited Iraq's Anbar province to underscore the success of the surge in making hitherto anarchic areas less so. More significant, however, was the fact that the president did not visit Baghdad. This underscored the fact that surge has failed, as measured by the president's and Petraeus' standards of success.</p>

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31, 2007 – Afghan national security forces, advised by coalition forces, defeated an insurgent attack yesterday near Regay Village on the east side of the Musa Qalah Wadi in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The combined force was on a combat patrol when insurgents attacked from multiple compounds and trenches using small-arms fire, 82 mm mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. The Afghan forces repelled the attack with accurate small-arms fire and artillery. When the insurgents reinforced their fighting positions with additional fighters, Afghan forces requested coalition close-air support. Coalition aircraft performed precision air strikes on the insurgents, killing a number of...

GALKAYO, Somalia On a dusty street that runs through this town of 80,000 in central Somalia, a cluster of men sit on low stools, lost in their daily ritual -- chewing the green leaves of a mild narcotic called khat. Lethargic and stupefied, they seem oblivious to everything. Only when their cellphones jangle -- a surreal sound in this otherwise primitive place -- do they snap to life. Soon they've arranged the money transfers they've been waiting for and lapse back into their somnolent masticating. Nothing much works in Somalia -- not water or sanitation, not health or education. But...